Plot Synopsis

While driving on a highway, Mara flipped through potential new hair colorings on her identity disc, asking her Bit which one to choose. When a tanker crashed ahead of her vehicle, she quickly switched back to manual driving and tried to avoid it, but ended up caught in the pileup, and was taken along with other crash victims for "testing." Upon her return to the garage, Mara, red-eyed and disoriented, startled and disturbed her friends by describing passing recognizers as beautiful.

Meanwhile, Keller, a scientist working for the Occupation, protested to General Tesler that she had invented the mind-controlling pathogenic code which had been used to hypnotize Mara and the other crash victims in order to liberate programs, not to enslave them. When she said she wanted out, Tesler threatened her life and assigned Pavel to monitor her carefully as the mind-control haze was released upon the citizens of Argon City.

Meanwhile, Mara's behavior grew increasingly worrying. While Beck, determined to investigate as the renegade, brushed off Zed's worries, Mara turned her hair orange and went out to join Bartik and Hopper at the 0001001 Club. When Zed followed her, she behaved violently and scornfully, proclaimed allegiance to Clu, and departed with her new friends for a party being thrown by the Occupation in Argon Square, leaving Zed stunned and unhappy.

Beck, arriving at the crash site in his disguise, was surprised to find Zed already there. Despite Zed's antipathy toward the renegade, the two worked together to isolate residue of the pathogenic code on the wreckage, and discovered that the tank had been programmed to crash and release its payload on the victims. When another tanker drove by, Zed and the renegade followed and, after a hair-raising light cycle chase during which several pursuing sentries were derezzed, caused the tanker to fall into the water instead of releasing the haze upon unsuspecting programs. However, they were unable to prevent several other tankers from simultaneously crashing, as the first had been programmed to do. Realizing that the compromised programs were being triggered by a pulse from a tall signal tower, the two decided to take it down.

Mara arrived at Argon Square, which was full of music, hypnotized programs, and the ubiquitous red haze of the pathogenic code. As the pulsing signal controlled their minds, Occupation slogans and pictures of Clu appeared on screens around the cheering crowd. Watching from above, Pavel gloated and invited Keller to celebrate with him; Keller coldly replied that she'd have to be affected by the pathogen for that to happen, and Pavel said that that could be arranged.

As the renegade prepared to hijack a dirigible to take out the signal tower, Zed donned a mask to prevent himself from inhaling the pathogen and strapped on a wing chute, determined to descend into the crowd and find Mara. Beck offered him some advice, knowing that he'd never used a wing chute before, and told him his friends were lucky to have him. Zed, despite some trouble with the chute, managed to deploy it in time to land safely among the crowd. Unaffected by the haze, he located Mara and managed to get her out of the square, but she noticed some leftover "TRON LIVES" graffiti and became enraged, hacking at the V with her disc until it read "TRON LI ES". When Zed tried to calm her, she turned on him instead.

Beck took over the dirigible, but was attacked by Pavel; their furious battle was interrupted by Keller, who knocked Pavel out with a light staff. As they raced to bail out, the dirigible crashed into the tower, interrupting the mind-control signal. Immediately, the programs in Argon Square stopped dancing and began to mill around in confusion. Mara, who had flung Zed to the ground and prepared to derezz him, stood again and docked her disc, unable to remember what had happened while she'd been under the pathogen's control. Zed asked hopefully how she felt about the renegade, and was happy when she started complaining about his constant negativity toward the Grid's hero.

Zed later encountered Beck in the garage and mentioned his encounter with the renegade, remarking casually that he wasn't that bad after all. Upon opening his locker, he was delighted to find the baton for his souped-up light cycle which the renegade had stolen from him in the Argon Race and had now finally returned.

Mara, resting in her quarters with her Bit, changed her hair back to its normal blue color while Tesler, back in his ship, fumed over Keller's escape and the destruction of the tower, without which the pathogenic code was useless. Pavel reported that without Keller, there was no way to reconstruct her work. Meanwhile, Keller, hiding in the vicinity of a light rail station, used an injection device to change her surface render to that of a male program, creating a disguise with which she hoped to escape detection.

Spoilers end here.

Trivia

This is the first time Tron doesn't appear.

In one point in this episode, Zed told Mara "This isn't you", the same phrase Beck said to Tron in Scars, Part 2.